Farm injuries are the fourth leading cause of death by occupation in Canada, a statistic which can severely stress the farming industry, says a study recently completed at Queen's University in Kingston.
In November, The AgriNews reported some findings from the study, particularly to do with farmers over the age of 60 being at risk. The completed paper, which looks at risks in all facets of the farm industry, appeared in the June edition of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The research paper is unusual, in that its authors, Dr. William Pickett and Dr. Rob Brison, worked with a variety of agricultural organizations and medical agencies to come up with statistics on farm death and injury. Such a link among groups had never been done before.
"We recognized for a long time that farming is a dangerous occupations but there were no national statistics to say so," said Pickett in an interview done with The AgriNews last year. "A lot of farm safety programs were doing this sort of blindly."
Brison and Pickett started looking at the risks involved in farming about ten years ago. In 1996, with the help of others working in the same area, they formed the Canadian Agriculture Injury Surveillance Program. (CAISP) The team's mandate was to look at the occurrence of work-related farm injuries, which resulted in death specifically between the year's 1991 and 1995.
By looking at records and statistics from a number of different agencies, CAISP reported a total of 503 deaths on the farm in that time period. That translates into an overall annual rate of 11.6 deaths per 100,000 farm population.
Brison says the numbers are not only the most accurate ever compiled in this country, he says the study also puts Canada ahead of the rest of the world for data in this area.
"If you look around the world, we probably have one of the best systems for surveillance on farms," says Brison.
"We really do have better data in Canada than most other countries that have similar farming practices just because we've been able to work cooperatively (with other agencies)."
Probably the most important breakthrough in the gathering of information came when CAISP was able to access hospital records. Says Brison, "Nobody in the world has hospitalization data like Canada.
"It's difficult to get access to individual hospital records. We've done that process. We did it first in Ontario and then in other provinces."
Brison says it was a matter of getting everyone, including medical authorities, to agree that a proper study simply couldn't be done without first gaining access to hospital records on farm injuries and fatalities.
Brison admits the study still isn't really complete since accidents go unreported all the time. "The kinds of injuries people have when driving their truck to the feed mill will not be counted. There's no system to collect that information.
Pointing out that "any other industry has Worker's Compensation coverage," and, therefore, a means of compiling statistics, Brison says farmers are in a group of their own. He suspects that if other numbers could be collected, they would make a big difference to the bottom line.
"We know our data is real but we know that it's also conservative. I'll bet farmers would sneak up on the list to above fourth, but we don't have proof of that."
As well as confirming that farming accidents are a big killer, CAISP also drew some conclusions, which spell trouble for the industry as a whole. Brison says the general public doesn't seem to realize how great an impact a farm death or serious injury can have on an individual farm.
He makes the comparison with a large company, saying that if someone high up in the operation is hurt, the company is "not likely" to close down. It's completely different, says Brison, when the workplace happens to be a farm.
"If a farmer is killed or hurt badly and disabled, it really stresses the whole operation and may result in the operation closing. The result of this," Brison continues, "is that farms will close and the farming operations that survive may be consolidated into other farms."
Brison goes on to say that a "loss of farmland" is another by-product of serious accidents. He says since the "largest proportion" of death or serious injury is to the owner-operator, the end result is that some farms "just fail," with the land subsequently becoming someone's "opportunity to turn that into a new subdivision."
Although Brison spends quite a bit of time discussing the seriousness of farm closures, he says more time needs to be spent in this area. "It's a statistic we probably should have put in the article."
As comprehensive as the journal article is, Brison says other numbers are also not as complete as he'd like to see them.
"We need to spend more time with hospitalization data ... or people who don't come to hospital at all.
"If there's a huge number of injuries that don't result in hospitalization or fatality but still use up a lot of resources ... we need to get a sense of how big this problem is."
In a section on prevention, the published paper suggests "injury prevention specialists" focus on high-risk populations and on "specific hazards" in order to improve farm safety.
Such populations include farmers over the age of 60 who were shown to have a rate of death "four times that of the remaining farm population." In fact, the highest rates were observed among people 70 and older, with numbers increasing again with farmers over 80. Children under 15 years of age accounted for "ten per cent" of people killed.
Of note, in children under 14, is that the most common accidents involved what the researchers called "blind" runovers where the bystander wasn't in view of the machine operator. Also common in that age group were "extra-rider runovers" where the victim falls from a machine and is subsequently run over.
Other numbers show tractors were involved in 48 per cent of the deaths and "entanglement in machinery" was the most common circumstance leading to death. It accounted for 10 per cent of cases.
The authors also have a list of recommendations for curbing the high numbers. They suggest, for example, that "comprehensive farm safety programs aimed at children" should be in place. They also target the makers of farm machinery, saying the industry as a whole must take more responsibility.
"Manufacturers and farm safety specialists should increase their efforts to promote and enforce the safe guarding of all farm vehicles and machinery," reads the section on findings and recommendations.
Brison says the next step is to "firm up our numbers" from across Canada and continue efforts to make farming a much safer occupation. "We're very much a part of the agricultural safety community," he says, pointing out that the research was funded by Agriculture Canada.
With the completion of the study, Canada now has a national registry for the surveillance of fatal farm fatalities. ==
ROBIN: Some stats you may want to put in a special box:
Queen's University Study done between 1991 and 1995 shows:
* Agriculture is the fourth most dangerous occupation in terms of fatal injury
behind mining, logging and forestry, and construction.
* 503 deaths from work-related farm injuries
* 228 people (or 60.2%) killed were owner-operators
* 57 people (or 15 %) killed were children of owner-operators
* Tractors accounted for 47.5% of deaths
* Other agricultural machinery accounted for 24.3% of deaths
* 28.4% of deaths were from causes not related to machinery
From the Archives:
News, August 1999
